A Study Of Cultural Contents In Textbook

Language and culture can’t not be separated from each other. Up to now, the communication between culture and language has become more and more frequently. To master a language, you must fathom the cultural connotation contained under the language. In Chinese educational system, cultural awareness, regarded as one of the five teaching objectives, is compiled into Criteria for Senior High School English Curriculum of 2003. Thus the cultural teaching, cultural content and cultural knowledge have become more and more vital in language teaching. As textbook is the most directly learning material for learners, so textbook plays a key role in cultivating learners’ cultural awareness. The research is based on the textbooks of FLTRP version, mainly on cultural content.The Curriculum has made a demand about every aspect for 6 to 9 levels.On one hand, the research takes cultural awareness goals(level 7 and 8) of curriculum, the classification of culture by Zhang Zhanyi and cultural content evaluation of Byram as theoretical basis. On the other hand, it classifies the cultural content of textbooks and does the qualitative and quantitative analysis. In order to know teachers and students’ attitude and judge toward cultural awareness and cultural contents in textbooks, it also does the questionnaire survey among teachers and students. The questionnaires are designed by Castro which are reliable.The research has summarized three points. First, the FLTRP senior English textbooks pay more attention to the communicative culture. They prefer to understand the English-Speaking countries’ lifestyle, worldwide culture and the comparison between sino-foreign culture. But some cultural awareness goals, like proverbs, religious belief and so on, are ignored by textbooks. Second, some senior English teachers ignore this point in daily teaching while they understand the necessity and importance of cultural teaching. Third, though the senior students think the textbooks can satisfy the cultural study with its extensive contents, they eager to learn more knowledge about the sino-foreign culture. And the research also gives some advice to the textbook editors, writers and English teachers about cultural teaching.